To Walk With You
by NameForsaken
Summary: An extended version of the Throne Room scene in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, featuring female Byleth. Mutual Edeleth heavily implied.


It wasn't supposed to be like this.

All around her, blades were clashing, metal upon metal as her soldiers warded off the rest of the palace's guards. The pungent scent of sweat and blood lingered in the atmosphere, adding to the nausea that had overtaken her since before the final battle had even begun.

She had hoped it wouldn't come to this. Before her, the Emperor, a young, pale beauty of barely twenty-two, struggled to catch her breath, knuckles of red clutched tightly around the hilt of her sword as she leaned all of her weight onto the makeshift crutch. Her eyes, though piercing as they were, still held the softest of memories, the purest of emotions that she'd always reserved for her professor, for the one person she knew she could never bring herself to hate.

Five years had passed since she had taken the throne of the Empire and declared war on the church. Thousands of lives she had stolen since then, thousands of families broken, villages torn apart by the devastating forces of her army. Anyone who had stood in her way had eventually met their end, all but the students the Professor had returned to upon waking from her five-year slumber.

_Five years. _

How many times had the Professor blamed herself for the massive amount of bloodshed that had occurred while she slept in absolute ignorance, away from it all? How many times had she wondered if she could have made a difference had she not fallen off that cliff, had she not lost her consciousness for so long?

She could have saved the Emperor.

_Edelgard von Hresvelg._ She was seventeen when the Professor had met her for the first time. No, she wasn't even a professor, then. She was just _Byleth_, a mercenary who followed Jeralt wherever he led her, fought whomever he'd told her to. She'd never asked questions before, never saw a reason to. Back then, fighting was the only life she'd ever known. It wasn't until that fateful evening, when Byleth and Jeralt had rescued three young nobles from a group of bandits, that she'd felt her heart awaken for the first time.

Upon the nobles was Edelgard, whom Byleth had come to cherish among her other students she'd been placed in charge of at Garreg Mach soon after their first encounter. The Edelgard back then was complicated, stern, but not without her own special warmth. She had confided her past, her trauma, her _everything_ in Byleth, had made it clear even from the beginning that the path she was on was not one most agreed with. Byleth never judged, never cared about the blood on her student's hands; all she wanted, back then, was to make Edelgard happy.

But then Jeralt—the only family Byleth had ever known—was slain right before her eyes. She had never felt true pain until the day she'd lost her father, but it wasn't the last time she'd feel something so utterly, soul-crushingly strong. When her father had died, Edelgard was there for her, waiting for her professor to pick herself up and return to her side. She was always there, speaking her truest, deepest emotions, hoping Byleth would continue to walk with her. She always said she couldn't do it without her, but Byleth had always thought it was just an exaggeration, just a result of the passion Edelgard felt for everyone, and everything. Passion had always been her driving force, had always been her strongest quality. Byleth had never imagined that it would one day be her downfall.

She still blamed herself for rejecting Edelgard the night her student came to her for help, asking for her assistance in the Empire. But Byleth had a job, she had made a promise to Rhea, and she wasn't going to break it, for her father's sake. She'd thought Edelgard of all people would understand. Her student returned, unharmed, and Byleth thought everything was fine.

But it _wasn't_ fine.

Edelgard, as Byleth had discovered early on in her days at the monastery, was living on borrowed time. Byleth should have known better than to buy her facade; she should have seen just how desperate her student was to change the future of Fódlan.

So much had happened that night five years ago, Byleth had difficulty recalling the exact order of events even now. She remembered Edelgard leading the Imperial Knights into the Holy Tomb, and then suddenly, everything went to chaos. Rhea barked orders as Byleth tried to make sense of it all, her students clashing weapons not unlike the battle now. Then Rhea was attacked, and Byleth jumped to her rescue, and the next thing she knew, she was being blasted back, far across the valley and into a pit of darkness.

If she had only followed Edelgard...

"It looks as though... my path... will end here."

Byleth blinked herself back to the present, back to the Throne Room where her former student crouched, sweat and blood dripping from her brow as she reached for her relic, fingers trembling beneath her crimson gloves.

She swallowed, Edelgard's words piercing through her, sharper than any blade ever could. She met the Emperor's tired gaze, wishing not for the first time she could just go back to before the war, before the blood and sweat and tears. What good was time travel if she couldn't use her abilities to save those who mattered most?

"My teacher… claim your victory."

She closed her eyes, head bowed as she struggled to find the words to refuse. But Seteth's voice echoed through her mind, even as he and the rest of her recruits stood outside, allowing Byleth the privacy to end this final fight.

_There has to be another way,_ she thought, but did not speak aloud. Edelgard would reject such desperation from Byleth, the one person who was supposed to be her rock.

"Strike me down, you must!"

Her eyes shot open, heart sinking, though it failed to beat. Though the Emperor couldn't see, Byleth's hands were shaking, her eyes burning as she fought back tears.

"Even now, across this land, people are killing each other." Edelgard's voice quaked, her words just as broken as her spirit, as the promise Byleth had made over five years ago not to leave her. "If you do not act now, this conflict will go on forever."

Byleth stood, gaze never leaving the Emperor's as her pleas reached every corner of her heart, as the rationality behind her words told Byleth there was no other choice. _I could have saved her…_

"Your path… lies across my grave. It is time you find the courage to walk it. If I… must fall—" Edelgard paused, her eyes finally leaving her professor's as her head fell in defeat. "—Let it be by your hand."

Her fists clenched around the cracked hilt of the Sword of the Creator, her exterior composed as ever, but her insides screaming louder than any of the chaos outside. She wanted to speak, wanted to give Edelgard another way out, but she knew her student better than to ever expect her to surrender. If Byleth wouldn't take her life, fate soon would, and in that time, she would only grow to resent her professor for refusing her dying wish. This was all she could give her, the only way Edelgard would let it end.

She stepped forward, her boots like lead as they clicked across the Throne Room floor, every muscle tensing in her well-trained body as she raised her sword high above the Emperor.

"I wanted…" Edelgard spoke once more, the final words that would ever leave the young woman's lips, "to walk with you."

Byleth inhaled, holding her breath as she ceased all thoughts, blocked every sight, every sound, every scent around her. Her arms seemed to act on their own as the blade came down, and Edelgard collapsed before her. The sword hit the ground, sound finally returning as the blade clinked against the cold floor, beside her student's lifeless body.

She couldn't bring herself to look as she knelt down, eyes closed as she finally released the well of tears. She felt around her until her fingers brushed against the softest locks of hair. She moved closer, clambering to scoop the woman into her embrace. Only now, did Byleth realize how small and frail Edelgard had let herself become. The war had taken a toll on her, both physically and emotionally. Though she had hidden behind a throne and a crown of thorns, Byleth had never stopped seeing her as that same girl she'd met all those years ago, the one who lost everything, but still fought to give the people of Fódlan the world.

At the end of it all, her vision remained the same. And Byleth was not going to let that vision die with her.

"I wanted—" she sputtered, cradling the woman close to her chest, soaking in what remained of her slowly-dying warmth, "—to walk with you, too."


End file.
